Thirty Days in Sound: The First Special Feature from Tracks & Tales

By Rafi Mercer, with Amelia Fairfax

The first thirty days of Tracks & Tales have felt like listening to a record spin for the first time, bloody exciting!

There is that anticipation before the needle drops, the sense of not knowing what is about to arrive but trusting the groove to carry you somewhere worth travelling. 

What began as a faint idea, a map based around a single word, has in just one month turned into something tangible.

Pages written, venues recorded, cities mapped, albums chosen, a society forming.

When we pressed publish for the first time in mid-August, there was no fanfare. No launch event, no campaign, no backers waiting in the wings.

Just a belief that listening deserved its own guide.

A belief that in a world rushing ever faster, some people might still want to slow down, sit with music properly, and treat sound as more than background noise.

From that silence, a signal was sent out, and people responded.

In these opening weeks, readers arrived from across the globe.

They came from New York rooftops and Kyoto backstreets, from Berlin courtyards and Australian beach towns.

The reach has already been wider and more unexpected than we imagined, a reminder that listening is not a local niche but a universal impulse.

Amelia often tells me that what excites her most about fashion week is not the clothes alone but the crowd: the energy of people from everywhere drawn into one room.

That is how these early figures feel. Not a mass, but a front row.

And so, here is the first set of numbers, a snapshot of where we are after just thirty days:

• 704 pages live, we've been awake most days 20 hours.
• 141 venues listed
• 250 city hubs mapped
• 652 readers from 62 countries and 267 cities
• 4,770 page views
• 356 organic clicks from 22,300 impressions
• Average click-through rate: 1.6% (with peaks at 5%)
• Average search position: 13.1 (already moving into 6–7 for key terms)
• Average time on site: 2 minutes 6 seconds
• 8–9 pages per visit
• 3 first subscribers to The List
• Vinyl store launched with 5 titles at £65 each (currently out of stock)

The work itself has been relentless, but there is no other way to build an atlas.

These seven hundred pages are not simply content — they are coordinates, stitching together a new kind of map.

Already, Google has indexed almost every one, a sign of trust that few new projects earn this quickly.

More importantly, people stay. They read, they wander, they click again. That is how an atlas should work: you enter through one doorway and find yourself somewhere unexpected, guided not by geography but by curiosity.

Amelia sees this as the early shape of a community forming.

For her, it feels more like a style movement than a media launch. The store reinforces this sense: five carefully chosen records, priced not to compete with the high street but to stand as collector’s signals. 

And then there is The Tracks & Tales Guide Subscribers. Only three names so far, and that is intentional. To belong is not automatic.

You apply, you wait, and you are chosen carefully.

This is the seed of a private club of some kind, not the scattergun of a newsletter list. 

Over time, it will be the most important element we build — a society to give the atlas its living heart.

What have we learned from this first month?

• That a single mind, working with discipline and obsession, can build something vast in a short space of time.
• That the world is hungry for listening, not as content but as culture.
• That readers from sixty countries will arrive with little more invitation than a page and a belief.
• That scarcity intrigues more than abundance. And above all, that attention still exists, waiting to be invited into the right kind of room.

The numbers are important because they prove the signal is carrying.

But the deeper story is that something has shifted.

• A map is being drawn.
• A guide is taking shape.

Thirty days is not much, but in cultural time it can be an epoch. 

Michelin began its guide with little more than a red booklet for travellers.

Monocle began with a single issue on the newsstand. 

Boiler Room began with a webcam in a small room.

Tracks & Tales begins with six hundred readers and a belief that sound deserves its own guide.

Thirty days in, we have only just placed the needle on the record. The music has not yet begun, but the groove is already pulling us forward.

And if the first few bars are any indication, the composition ahead will be worth the listening.

Thanks to each and everyone of you who has joined us on this little journey, we will meet you all one day soon, how we don't really know, but that's the thing, not really knowing drives every days of effort!

Right, I'm off for a coffee and a little bit of jazz.

See you

Rafi, and Amelia.